…that I have become a recent One Direction fan and got the fever since watching One Thing..

…that I am currently, freely, helping out in a local production house called Resolution Production, which has been asked by Qatar TV to produce a show based on fashion. Therefore, I have been and will be very busy but excited at the same time!! I have only attended 3 meetings, everything and everyone have been great to me so far. I’m looking forward to working with more people and contacting local designers, stylists, etc. Cannot wait to start shooting and post pictures! I might as well have my friends involved in the filming, so it would be awkwardly cool to film my own friends :’)

It’s also nice to know there have been new readers dropping by my blog.

Cheers x

(taken by my baby Diana F+)

The past few days had been absolutely legitimate. Starting from Tuesday, my first day of school after the new year, my friend Marsya and Lavinia dragged me after school to meet a man called Farooq Burney and interview him for a project.

Pakistani-Canadian Mr. Burney was involved in the raid of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla back in May 2010, while 9 people died and 50 were injured. Along with his other colleagues, supposedly helping Gaza, were captured and prisoned instead by the Israelis.
He is currently the director of Al Fakhoora as quoted from their website, “We are an international campaign working to secure the freedom to learn for Palestinian students in Gaza and the West Bank with funding, extra-curricular activities, career guidance, building reconstruction and emotional support.” - http://fakhoora.org/

The next day, Marsya and I interviewed former news producer and author Rosie Garthwaite. You may remember her from my previous post How To Avoid Being Killed in A War Zone.
Both Farooq and Rosie told us about the year they considered their big year!

And… the third day… Remember I met the FC Bayern Munich last year’s January? Here is the post if you didn’t get to get across it.
I MET THEM AGAIN LAST NIGHT.
Yep! It was great that I got to see them again with a girl friend, Sarah,this time, there was someone to fangirl and went crazy with. Firstly, we went around the Aspire zone (sports area in Qatar) to find the pitch and so I decided to show her the way  to the old place where I met them. And yes! we were right. We watched them practicing and we also came across a hidden and dark pitch where they took Manuel Neuer and Bastian Schweinsteiger! haha. They put on, mostly, the extra players in training while me and Sarah stayed along the side ways and seeing some of the main players passing, Thomas Muller, Holger Badstuber, Philip Lahm and Arjen Robben. Later on that evening, Schweinsteiger, Muller and Robben were having a signing session at an adidas store in a mall so we went to see them there and met them! Schweinsteiger and Muller were super friendly as they saw my signed jersey from last year and pointed out,

“oh wow! You came to see us last year. Nice!” then I stopped breathing for a while.

But we weren’t allowed to take pics, sadly sadly, hopefully the newspaper people will put it up since one of my friends’ picture was up on the FCB facebook page!So yeah, that was my 3 amazing days, Alhamdulillah, what a beginning to a year, hoping to see more exciting things soon!

Farooq Burney, Marsya and Lavinia

Sarah, Holger Badstuber (left), Philip Lahm (right) and my little brother! haha

As you may all know how much I loved that 3 days of my life that I spent in the beach attending Run The World Festival, here is a video I made summarizing those 3 beautiful day <3

And yes, you can spot me on stage at 0:50 haha. Little me is little.

Run The World Festival page on facebook featured it, even the CEO! Mihihi im happy :-]

As a solution, I had to stick up the photos on the sound system fences which was a pain in the bottom.

The top photos are mine, including the winning photo while the falling ones are other people’s pictures. Ps, there were not supposed to fall, it was such a hardwork!

So that was day 1, not many things actually happened on the one but for some reasons, I thought it was so much fun.

Here comes day 2

Quite a lot happened that day, including marathon competition and the ‘Youth Got Talent’. Basically, it was those talent show but this year it happened to be only singing and they are actually planning on opening audition for dancers as well next year! Not to mention, they’ve got photo stands for me this time.

One of the parkour athletes. Legit!

Got my stands! yaaaay.

Above is my school mate, Yara, who participated in the Youth Got Talent. She sang a Christina Aguilera song and she sounded amazing! I will make sure I put up videos later

Day 3.

This day was basically the continuos of the other 2 days, more parkour shows, skateboarding and also the announcement of the talent show winners. Also, this day was the last day yet probably the most special as it was Qatar’s national day! Us volunteers and organizers were asked to wear Qatari flagged coloured scarves and accessories. My friends and I were and still are very proud to know that our friend Yara won 4th place and the whole of our school’s students participation in this festival was great. Not only Yara and myself, but also another guy who won 2nd place in the short film competition.

I really don’t know what else to say, those 3 days were simply great, I got to know loads of new amazing and inspiring people. Not to mention the amount of strangers that came up to me “you’re dhia? you won the competition right? your work is amazing” was creepily sweet! <3

The highlight of the event was the event director, also my new friend, Ziga, who came all the way form Slovenia to work with the Youth Company! He was indeed a very sweet and helpful guy whom everybody loved. He was also very entertaining as he presented the whole event and made many laugh!

It was great to know everybody else and also made friends, not only form outside of school but ironically, I actually got to know some of my school people through this event!

Just before the event ended, Muhammad Farid, CEO of the Youth Company (the one in black hoodie and holding a mic) called up the organizers of the event.

Nurliyana & Ziga

There was actually another sedan covered in graffiti, provided for the parkour athletes.

Starting off since last Sunday, which was my last week of school for this term, when I received a call from one of the dudes in The You(th) Company to tell me that one of my submitted photos for this competition was chosen as the top 25 out of more than 100 photos submitted and that it will be exhibited in Intercontinental Hotel.
To give you an overview, The You(th) Company is the first Youth Social Entreprise in Qatar aiming to provide a worldwide platform for youth development and to supply the community with useful youthful consultancy services. The company is considered ‘newborn’ as it’s only been running for about a year(?) and already ran a one week festival called “RUN THE WORLD FESTIVAL” which started on the 11 till the 18/12/2011, consisted various competitions which include photography, short film, and mostly sports as this year’s theme happened to be ‘youth and sports’. On the 16th-18th was the beach festival where 11-15 were just exhibition and conferences.

But anyway, when I got the call I was honestly not bothered to go since I was so tired and had loads of things to do for school and plus, I didn’t tell my parents I submitted pictures for a competition. Somewhat somehow, I decided to explain to my folks and got them to bring me to the ‘announcement night’. Guess what? Apart from one out of 4 photos that I submitted got in to the top 25, my short video was in the top 5!
And guess what? I won the first place for the photo competition To be honest, I REALLY didn’t expect that since I wasn’t really satisfied with the pictures I took, but oh well. Here are pics from that night and my winning photo.

Later on that night, the facebook admin of Run The World fest. admin uploaded that photo up and look, the amount of likes and feedbacks! <3

Here is the video that I submitted & got nominated to top 5

Apart from above, another thing that made me feel excited were that: I will be going to Dubai next March for the World Scholars Cup to represent my school! Hyped hyped hyped, cannot wait!

Lastly, I’ll make one post about the 3 day beach festival itself.